Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ Morning Will Come ❯ Part Six ( Chapter 7 )

Title: Morning Will Come

Author: Emily, roguegirl@att.net

Warnings: yaoi, het, language, violence, possible OOC, EU?, un-betaed, death

Pairings: 1x2x1, 3x4, 5xM, 13x11

Archive: Want it? Take it. Just please give me credit.

Disclaimer: None of these characters and their personalities are mine, but the story's plot and concepts are mine, so please no stealing my creations. Unless you want to contribute accompanying art…then be my guest, but I want to see!

Comments: This part is written differently from all the previous others; I wanted more of a journal-type reaction than a step-by-step third-person narration, so this will seem more like a journal or a letter. Then the POV switches to present from past but stays in first person. It might be confusing, but that's how I wanted this part to flow. Morning Will Come

Part Six

December 7, 1941

They're calling it the day that will live in infamy. At 7:55 in the morning, just before 10:00 Pacific Standard Time, nineteen American ships were either sunk or damaged, and they're saying that as many as twenty-five hundred are presumed dead.

Maybe I should fill you in on what went on today.

I woke up late like habit every Sunday morning; aren't expected to show up at work downstairs at any particular time, so Sundays are usually the sluggish, lazy days off. Only work half-days on Saturday, but the fact that I still have to be downstairs by eight (which means awake at six sharp) gets ridiculous on a day-by-day basis.

So Sundays are the sleeping-in days. Mind you, I don't sleep in until lunchtime, but eight-thirty is nice and late to someone used to getting up two-and-a-half hours earlier. Heero doesn't work Saturdays or Sundays, the lucky bastard (my lucky bastard), so Sunday mornings really are the only mornings we get to spend together without hurried kisses goodbye and I'll-see-you-laters, so of course we go all out and have a nice, sometimes messy, breakfast together.

Breakfast is usually made up of coffee so strong that you tremble violently and your eyes dart back and forth inside your skull with a muffin…blueberry, generally (hey, I like tradition), but sometimes you can find something special lying around. Like Mom's banana nut bread…damn that's good stuff…

Where was I going with this? Oh yes! So Sunday breakfasts are usually special. I know I'm a sucker for a good Belgian waffle, but maple syrup normally ends up less on the waffle and more on Heero or myself which really is a bitch to get out of hair whether its as long as mine or not.

If it had been any day other than a Sunday, the radio would have been on and I would have heard about the news as soon as it happened, but no CBS news broadcast was going to ruin this particularly sticky Sunday morning as Heero and I tried to figure out what to put on that morning's pancakes. We would have had the maple syrup, but it can be just so damn expensive out hear since it has to be shipped across the country.[1] Orange marmalade seemed to do the job quite nicely…even washed off of skin and out of hair without too much of a problem during out breakfast interlude.

So it was safe to say that it was a little past ten when Hilde came barging in the door, and with me dripping wet in a towel with my hair down and Heero changing because what he had been wearing before got a little…messy, neither of us had been quite prepared for what she had to say. I was getting ready to bitch the woman out; just because she has a key doesn't mean she's at liberty to use it whenever she wants, you know?

"What the hell is wrong with the two of you?"

I had actually been prepared to ask her a similar question, but the look in her eyes made me stop any comeback I might have had. It was a rhetorical question, anyway; and I didn't feel like there was anything wrong with either of us at this time… Except for the fact that I'm wearing only a towel and my hair in front of one of my best friends who happens to be a girl.

"Do you live in a box!?"

Another rhetorical question that I chose to ignore.

"Don't you even care about what's going on out there?" Hilde was seething as she pointed out the window.

And then we took her literally.

"It's raining," Heero replied simply, looking miffed with the interruption.

"Yeah, Hilly; it happens quite frequently around here in this time of year," I really wanted to get dressed, but I wasn't just going to drop towel in front of Hilde so I could get a decent pair of pants on. Not that I have any problem with my body or anything… It is just there's some things that friends aren't supposed to share, if you know what I mean.

She blinked almost dumbly at us, as if we had been joking. God, we seriously thought she had practically broken into the place to bitch about the weather!

"You…you haven't been listening to the radio?" The disbelief was evident in her voice.

"No, we haven't," I replied, getting more and more curious as to what was really going on. I just don't care about the news on Sundays. Sundays are supposed to be special; the day me and Heero get to spend the whole twenty-four hours with each other without the damn radio telling us about Hitler's latest invasion or how many people were slaughtered by Yamamoto's troops the previous day. When all news is bad news, you start questioning why you have to put up with it to begin with. Some days the radio is just asking to be thrown out the God damn window.

"Well let me get dressed and I'll be there in a second!" I had smiled gratefully at Heero as the guided Hilde into the kitchen to get me some privacy. I just love him so much that sometimes it feels like I'm dreaming and any minute I'll wake up.

I got dressed and walked in on a radio broadcast. The reporter was mid-sentence; Hilde looked royally pissed and like she was about to cry at the same time. Heero's hands were clenched into fists at his side and his face was impassive, his tense shoulders and clenched hands the only signs of how he felt.

"…There has been heavy damage done in Hawaii and there has been heavy loss of life. Repeat: The American Naval Base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii was bombed at 7:55 am. Nineteen American ships were damaged or destroyed and the death toll is now over two thousand and still climbing…"

It took me a moment to figure out why Pearl Harbor sounded so familiar; it took another moment to connect the knowledge of who was there to what had happened there. I remember my initial thoughts after the fact of the matter dawned on me: Shit. Fuck. No.

Trowa…Trowa was stationed in Hawaii. Death toll over two thousand and still climbing. Trowa might be dead. The fact that we still don't know if he survived or not is nearly unbearable.

I think Quatre went into shock when we heard the news. Heero said he'd go get Quatre; Hilde told him that it might not be a good idea, so she went instead.

"W-Why wasn't it a good idea for you to go?" I had managed to say. I was clearly missing some vital information about the attack. Heero just gave me a distant look in reply. I had never seen him like that before; he seemed locked up inside himself, the way I was for a long time after my father's death.

I had another revelation at that moment. I don't know if a revelation is the right word for it, but something sure happened. It wouldn't have made sense if the Germans attacked Pearl Harbor; that required them crossing two continents, and as much as the United States and the USSR[2] despise each other, we have a common enemy, and there is no way Hitler could get troops across the USSR without anyone knowing.

The Axis Powers: Germany, Italy, Japan… Japan only has an ocean to cross, and that's easy with the ships and planes that exist in this day of age. Heero doesn't know Trowa that well, so it's a little ridiculous to think he'd seem so…cold of the possibility of Trowa being…dead; the Japanese being the ones who attacked us seemed to be the only sensible answer.

But why couldn't Heero go get Quatre? He happens to be half-Japanese, big deal; Hilde's of German heritage. They couldn't be persecuted for that, could they? I mean, if Americans turned again German, Italian, or Japanese-Americans, wouldn't we be no better off than Hitler with his quest to create the perfect Aryan race?

The irony of this whole situation kicked in rather quickly. Myself, as pureblooded American as you can get, stuck in a triangle. My best friend, blond-haired, blue-eyed…the perfect Aryan; Hilde, both of her parents German immigrants, moving to the United States before they had been old enough to start school, and Heero, my love, my husband, Japanese even though to some extent he can't even stand his own people and the prejudice that got his parents killed because of the union outside their ethnicity.

I probably could have cried then, but I didn't. I did later, when it was safe and I could cry into my pillow and only Heero, myself, and our bedroom could bear witness to it, but right then right there just wasn't the right time.

Quatre was in denial; he had heard about the news, but it didn't seem to register in his brain until he looked me in the eye. Sometimes having a reputation for never lying is a burden; Quatre saw the truth, and it connected in his brain, and I think he snapped. Well, less snapped and more of a mental breakdown. I never realized he could throw such a deft punch until I tried to calm him down and he got me in the jaw. I think I bit my tongue because I know I tasted blood, but time seemed to slow while actions started to blend together almost so it seemed that the world was a movie reel and some frames were being skipped over as they happened.

They say that when a loved one dies, a person goes into different stages of grieving. I probably went through all of them when my father died, but I'm pretty sure we saw Quatre go through all of them right then and there. What is it? Denial, anger, grief, and acceptance; sometimes they repeat and sometimes there's displacement and a boatload of others. Quatre came in, acting right-as-rain, then attacks me, getting out all the anger, before collapsing onto the floor wracked with sobs.

Me feeling like the asshole the whole time, sitting besides him on the floor, letting him cry on my shoulder as I keep Heero in my vision, once again relishing in how much I love him and how lucky I am to still have him unlike Quatre who's lover has a high probability of no longer being alive.

I remember clutching at my father's cross beneath my shirt and praying. I haven't done that in a very long time, and I was praying for Trowa's well being soon followed by giving my thanks for the attack not affecting my family.

I said I felt like an asshole, didn't I? I still do, actually.

Then I thought about Solo, off at a military training camp somewhere in the Midwest. Mom took that news surprisingly well. I guess that's because she remembers the First World War.

They're calling this one the Second.

Mom had a brother, several cousins, and an uncle or two that lost lives in the last one. Solo was practically born in the middle of it. Dad had been stationed on the home front, and growing up we'd heard enough stories from Relena Darlian's father for us to find better games as children than ones that involved improvised militaristic fighting.

Darlian raised his kids to be pacifists. That's the reason we thought Milliardo, the eldest, ran away. He wanted to fight in this war yet didn't want to dishonor his father's instruction. Wish he stayed; Milliardo would have been nicer to do business dealings with than that bitch sister of his…

Neither of us feel like going to bed right now. Maybe I won't open the place up tomorrow. Heero managed to find a military station that's gone through the list of confirmed dead and goes through the state of each soldier or civilian if they find the body dead or alive.

Haven't mentioned a Trowa Barton yet. I keep trying to remember what he would have been doing. Would he have been on base at the time or inland? Was he on one of the boats? Nineteen of those are gone. The Japanese submarines and bombers saw to that.

Mom called. She said St. Mary's is supposed to ring the bell for every person that was killed this morning. I think it would save time to ring for the survivors, instead. As callous as it might sound, maybe an observed moment of silence would be more practical.

*~**~*

Still no news on Trowa.

Quatre actually seems to be handling the situation pretty well right now. He's sitting on the couch with a blanket wrapped around him, staring blankly at the wall. I can tell he's listening to the radio, concentrating on the broadcasters voice and seemingly nothing else.

I asked him if he called Catherine. He asked me why I thought it would be necessary. I said that she might have some news, and Quatre just looked at me and said that if he called Catherine he might miss something about Trowa, and that clogging the phone line wouldn't be helpful if Trowa were trying to call.

I told him that Trowa already could have tried calling but since he was here instead of at his own place, he stopped trying. Quatre told me to shut up, Hilde brought in more coffee, and we pretty much left it at that.

I'm starting to think that we should get the wallpaper changed. It looks like it spins after you've downed a hefty portion of caffeine. I bet if I were to cut my wrist open, rich black coffee would pour out of my veins instead of blood.

Did I mention it's late and we're stressed and tired?

Heero just recommended that we try and get some sleep. One look at Quatre tells me he isn't even going to try and Hilde seems willing to keep him company.

"Get some rest, boss," a ghost of her usual smile quickly gracing her features.

I let Heero dumbly drag me to our room. I tired and jittery and stressed and scared and relieved and grateful and eighty thousand other emotions I can't even identify. It just gets to be such a burden after awhile.

It's just me and Heero; I turn into his shoulder, and his arms seem like they were waiting for me. For the second time that evening, I cry uncontrollably, releasing all that I feel onto the warm, comfortable presence Heero gives.

He's so much stronger than I am; he hasn't shed a tear since we learned the news. I'll try to figure out why later, but this emotional catharsis comes with a price, and I suddenly feel exhausted.

Let's try to sleep on it and hope some good news will come tomorrow.

*~**~*

Tsuzuku

[1] Are their sugar maple trees in California? I don't think so. I hope not. That was the only part I didn't do research for in this entire part. Gomen. ^-^;;

[2] All right, I lied. I don't remember if it was Russia, the Soviet Union, or the USSR at this point in time. Pretty sure it was the USSR, so that's what I'm using.

A/N: I never saw the movie "Pearl Harbor". I heard it sucked and was very accurate historically; a lot of information in the above part was either pre-known from school or found online.

Yes, this part is shorter than the others, but it was also written in an hour and a half. ^-^ I wanted this one day to be covered in one part and written differently from any of the others, FYI.